Crossing the lines

There was a boy in our neighborhood named Tony. He was a bit younger than my buddies, but large for his age -bigger than me. But Tony never played with us. We invited him, but he didn't want to. He preferred to play house. He had dolls and a playhouse. He got along great with the girls next door. We didn’t get too close to all of that. There was something about it that made the rest of us guys nervous. So we made fun of Tony and called him sissy. One kid called him a "queer," so the rest of us did too, even though we didn’t know what that meant. We didn’t know any better. Or did we? Somewhere inside, it felt wrong to tease him. Mostly we ignored him. That was easy. He was different.